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Tag Archives: ermey

Die-hard drill instructors, jailbreaking football coaches, and corrupt backwoods sheriffs. It was all just another day of work for former Marine Corp. drill instructor-turned-actor R. Lee Ermey, who died earlier this week. Ermey was an incredibly dynamic character-actor with an instantly recognizable face and rambunctious personality. The Kansas native joined the Marine Corp. in lieu of jail time after he’d been arrested twice by the age of 17. He began his career serving as a drill instructor in San Diego during the early 1960s before eventually being sent on a 14-month deployment in Vietnam. He was injured during his tour in 1969 and was sent to work as a staff sergeant in Okinawa before being medically discharged in 1972, ending his hopes of a long military career. After moving to the Philippines to attend college, Ermey married and began taking odd jobs in television commercials before landing his first film role as Sgt. Loyce in a movie called The Boys in Company C, which followed five young Marine Corp. recruits from their bootcamp training to their deployment in Vietnam. Continue reading →

Iconic film director Stanley Kubrick, who died in 1999, is behind some of the most memorable films of the twentieth century, including 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), A Clockwork Orange (1971), The Shining (1980), and Full Metal Jacket (1987), and has worked with actors like Jack Nicholson, R. Lee Ermey, Adam Baldwin, Malcolm McDowell, Tom Cruise, and Nicole Kidman. Known for his obsessive style of moviemaking, the director received critical acclaim throughout the course of his career, not only for his unique style of story-telling, but also for his attention to detail. That being said, he could also be credited as one of Hollywood’s most unrecognized directors, receiving more than 10 Oscar nominations but only securing one in 1968 for Best Visual Effects (2001: A Space Odyssey), with four additional Golden Globe nominations, but no wins. Despite all that, Kubrick has still managed to maintain a strong influence on modern filmmakers more than a decade after his death, including The Dark Knight and Inception director Christopher Nolan, whose new film, Interstellar, has been cited as a modern day 2001 by many critics and movie-goers. Now Kubrick’s legacy is being celebrated with a new DVD/Blu-Ray 10-disc box-set titled Stanley Kubrick: The Masterpiece Collection, due out in stores this December 2nd. The set not only includes 10 of Kubrick’s iconic collection, including Lolita (1962), Dr. Strangelove (1964), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), A Clockwork Orange (1971), Barry Lyndon (1975), The Shining (1980), Full Metal Jacket (1987), and his final film Eyes Wide Shut (1999), it also includes new special features like behind-the-scenes documentaries and interviews. So if you’re a fan of Kubrick’s you should definitely add this to your Christmas list.